Scientific American Supplement No. 822, October 3, 1891 eBook

Instead of attempting to classify mankind as a whole,
students were now engaged in classifying skulls, hair,
teeth, and skin. Many solid results had been
secured by these special researches; but as yet, no
two classifications, based on these characteristics,
had been made to run parallel. The most natural
classification was, no doubt, that according to the
color of the skin. This gave us a black, a brown,
a yellow, a red, and a white race, with several subdivisions.
This classification had often been despised as unscientific;
but might still turn out far more valuable than at
present supposed. The next classification was
that by the color of the eyes, as black, brown, hazel,
gray, and blue. This subject had also attracted
much attention of late, and, within certain limits,
the results have proved very valuable. The most
favorite classification, however, had always been
that according to the skulls. The skull, as the
shell of the brain, had by many students been supposed
to betray something of the spiritual essence of man;
and who could doubt that the general features of the
skull, if taken in large averages, did correspond to
the general features of human character? We had
only to look around to see men with heads like a cannon
ball and others with heads like a hawk. This
distinction had formed the foundation for a more scientific
classification into brachycephalic, dolichocephalic,
and mesocephalic skulls. If we examined any large
collection of skulls we had not much difficulty in
arranging them under these three classes; but if, after
we had done this, we looked at the nationality of each
skull, we found the most hopeless confusion.
Pruner Vey, as Peschel told us in his “Volkerkunde,”
had observed brachycephalic and dolichocephalic skulls
in children born of the same mother; and if we consider
how many women had been carried away into captivity
by Mongolians in their inroads into China, India,
and Germany, we could not feel surprised if we found
some long heads among the round heads of those Central
Asiatic hordes.

DIFFERENCES IN SKULLS.

Only we must not adopt the easy expedient of certain
anthropologists who, when they found dolichocephalic
and brachycephalic skulls in the same tomb, at once
jump to the conclusion that they must have belonged
to two different races. When, for instance, two
dolichocephalic and three brachycephalic skulls were
discovered in the same tomb at Alexanderpol, we were
told at once that this proved nothing as to the simultaneous
occurrence of different skulls in the same family;
nay, that it proved the very contrary of what it might
seem to prove. It was clear, we were assured,
that the two dolichocephalic skulls belonged to Aryan
chiefs and the three brachycephalic skulls to their
non-Aryan slaves, who were killed and buried with their
masters, according to a custom well known to Herodotus.
This sounded very learned, but was it really quite